The World Bank said yesterday that the global economy will likely shrink for the first time since World War II and trade will record its biggest decline in nearly 80 years, Bloomberg reported.

In 2008, the value of global financial assets fell more than $50 trillion, which is equivalent to a full year’s worth of world gross domestic product, according to a report from the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

“This crisis is the first truly universal one in the history of humanity,” former International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Michel Camdessus said at an ADB forum today. “No country escapes from it. It has not yet bottomed out.”

The World Bank said developing nations will be the most affected by the global financial contraction. The World Bank predicts developing nations will face a shortfall of between $270 billion and $700 billion needed to pay for imports and service debts.

“Emerging economies were initially able to absorb the initial impact of the crisis on account of the considerable progress in recent years in consolidating economic performance,” said Claudio Loser, a former IMF director and now the Latin American president of strategic advisory firm Centennial Group Inc. “This group of countries is experiencing mounting difficulties. Policy-makers will thus need to find a balance between economic stimulus and financial stability.”

However, unlike the World Bank, the IMF released a report in January that predicted 0.5 percent global growth for 2009.